China's ghost towns: Tale of empty skyscrapers

CHICAGO: These sprawling housing developments and skyscrapers in one of the world's most populous countries, should be busy and swarming with people. On the contrary, the stunning pictures above show elaborate public buildings and open spaces that are left completely empty.

In fact, according to satellite images recently published by the Business Insider, there are more than half-a-dozen newly built cities/towns in the world's fastest growing economy that are entirely empty. These are China's ghost towns.

Most of these cities built during the last six years – some twice the size of Los Angeles, some don't even have a name, but all of them with world-class facilities.

According to a recent report, there are more than 70 million uninhabited houses in China, a country that has been reportedly building an average of 10 cities a year over the past few years. Recently, China announced plans to build 20 cities a year for the next 20 years.

One such city is Thames Town, built as a replica of an Austrian village, Hallstatt, at the cost of $9 billion. It was built in 2006 as part of Shanghai's "One City, Nine Town" initiative, an attempt to decentralize the city. Today, it's a ghost town, with empty shops, almost no resident and unused roads.

It has an artificial lake and a few tourists – photographing every building there for the past few years – have been the only sign of human life there.

Blogger triplefivedrew, who visited Thames Town in 2010, likened the place to the set of The Truman Show.

Last year, Forensic Asia Limited first reported the empty Chinese cities. And in about six months since the report, the country has built about six more of them.

"China consumes more steel, iron ore and cement per capita than any industrial nation in history. It's all going to railways that will never make money, roads that no one drives on and cities that no one lives in. It's like walking into a forest of skyscrapers, but they're all empty," Gillem Tulloch, an analyst for Forensic Asia Limited, said of Chenggong.

Tulloch said that apartments in Chenggong, a fishing village near Hong Kong, were selling for up to $80,000. He added: "People there were joking that no one in Denaya could afford to live there."

Chinese government think tank have warned that the country's real estate bubble is getting worse, with property prices in major cities overvalued by as much as 70 per cent.